Born of Love
by Laura Fones
Summary: HannibalClarice: Love stories don't end with the first kiss or the first time they make love.


Title: Born of Love  
  
Author: Laura Fones  
  
E-mail Address: rb46628@aol.com  
  
Feedback: I love it, I thrive on it, and I answer all of it.  
  
Cannon: After Hannibal the Novel, follows cannon.  
  
Content: Clarice/Hannibal  
  
Rating: PG-13  
  
Disclaimer: The characters Hannibal Lecter and Clarice Starling are the creation of Thomas Harris, hereafter known as God. I am only borrowing them in hopes of creating something interesting.  
  
Summary: Beauty in distress is much the most affecting beauty.  
  
  
  
  
  
Though he had the amazing, innate ability to remain entirely emotionless in countenance, Clarice could see the sharp, quick beats behind his thought. She could see him form a plan, but be ignorant of the plan itself, just as he could see her recall each evocative memory and look through every hidden glance. She could know he was up to something, but he knew her 'something'. And, thus, their relationship: partners, lovers, companions, compeers, but only one understood the other. Well, to be entirely accurate, Hannibal never fully understood the youthful Clarice, as that would be wholly tedious, but he knew her motives, whereas she ran blindly.  
  
Each loved; there was no second-guessing that, but their rapport, so to speak, was without equality. He worshipped her, but had her at a great disadvantage. She was in adoring awe of him, but her amazement was tinged with a lingering fear that no amount of distance from the F.B.I. and doting from him could entirely erase.  
  
And he knew this.  
  
It was immensely frustrating for him, as, though without faith, he would swear on any hallowed object of her Protestant upbringing that he would never so much as displace an auburn strand on her head without express permission, let alone harm his beloved.  
  
What was also grating, he found, was her distaste (and, more importantly, lack of acceptance) of his past. Once he'd even entertained the thought that he'd made a mistake in contacting her after eight years of silence and, ultimately, seducing her. Perhaps, he'd mused, it would have been better to leave her untarnished with her most perfect moral compass. Though he'd dismissed it quickly, the idea was a fully formed conception, living forever in his palace of memory, content to assault him in dreams, as all regrets of that nature did.  
  
His wish to restore Mischa, to right the previous wrong, had dissipated long ago beside the reflective waters of the Chesapeake, but his wish of restoration now fixed itself on Clarice. He wished to restore her same boldness that she had demonstrated before their abrupt leave to places unknown after the cerebral feast that was Paul Krendler. He wondered if her 'pluck' had been left in the states and briefly meditated the notion of returning morphine to their practices (as she was most pleasant when injected with narcotics).  
  
She had distanced herself after their tryst on the bay and, although they were still intimate quite regularly, she had lost the one thing he valued most: her passion to move beyond the lines. Now she walked relentlessly inside their places of residence. Be it a suite, a house, or any facsimile thereof, she wandered like a lion in a golden cage, but refused to leave it. Occasionally, she would be still and reflective, resting her head in his lap or nuzzling next to or into him, trying, it seemed, to fight her nature given urge to flee captivity. These moments, rare as they were, stretched into eternity, her silence cherished but undeniably deafening.  
  
On such a unique occasion, with Clarice entangled in Hannibal's arms, her silence prompted him to recall the regret that had seized his thoughts and tormented him to acknowledge its validity. He shifted slightly and intoned in all softness. "Are you regretful, Clarice?"  
  
His voice, which had never broken these peaceful periods, surprised her at first (which was obvious as she shuddered on reflex), but she responded with an equally monotonous tone. "Regretful of what?"  
  
He sighed, "You've had but one instance to regret in two years Clarice, but if I must be candid, allow me to clarify. Are you regretful of the events that led to us?"  
  
Wordless, for moments it seemed, she sat without motion or breath. "It was two years ago," She said casually, "I don't remember if I could regret."  
  
She was lying. In truth she remembered with unnatural acuteness the events. She could still sense the faint smell of parchment and ink on the tips of her fingers from the letter that broke their mutual silence, still feel the sting of the dart in her shoulder, the morbid thankfulness of bidding good- bye to her father's bones, all remained in immediate memory. These things were the events leading to the 'us' of whom Hannibal spoke, and she remembered. But was she regretful?  
  
The question hung and infected the air. Her answer was inadequate, her answer was a fallacy, and she knew that such a response would not be tolerated. "I didn't regret it then," She attempted to remain as calm as he, as undeniably impossible as it was to achieve. "Why should I regret it now?"  
  
"Because I no more want to be your cause of incarceration than I would you were mine." He answered, removing his arms, the allegorical symbol of his allowance of her freedom from imprisonment, and him.  
  
She protested as he lifted his hold, "You haven't jailed me Hannibal, you saved me!" She sighed, "How could you think any differently?"  
  
"You walk about as if encaged, as if I keep you here." He touched the side of her face, turning it to him. "As if you fear me." She looked down for just a second, but it was heavily acknowledged and he dropped his hand, moving off the couch with liquid grace and singular movement. Before disappearing into the bedroom, he whispered despondently. "I release you, do what you will."  
  
Clarice sat with the motionlessness of grief-stricken shock. Then, in a moment of lapse judgment, she yelled after him with every bit of her repressed anger filtering through her voice. "Weakling!" She screamed to him, "Emotionally-defeated child!"  
  
He poked his head out from behind the unclosed doors, a mixture of confusion and upset pride lighting his eyes. "Clarice," He said with forceful gentleness, "I'm giving you a chance to escape this, do not test my resilience with childish name-calling."  
  
Propriety fell from her in that moment, the cultured exterior she so practiced retreating within her like a small child fearful of punishment, and her West Virginian accent becoming again pronounced, "Bullshit Hannibal!" She was off the couch and in front of him with inhuman speed that nearly equaled his own. "Immature whelp, I didn't know you gave up so easily." Her voice became less livid and instead lulled into taunting, the same tone he'd used on her so many years before.  
  
"Clarice." He began, but she, in her fevered rage, had the courage to cut him off.  
  
"Would you give me up so easily, Hannibal?" She drew out his name with the same slow seduction he'd demonstrated with the syllables of her own. "Am I to understand you would dispossess me without a fight after all the pains taken in procuring me?" She hissed the last words. "For shame!"  
  
He stood patiently; anger draining as her fire and light heated the room with the same intensity he'd remembered the first night. He hid his delight as she circled him, testing the boundary, uncaring of her consequence.  
  
"I've never possessed you Clarice, there's nothing I can dispossess." He said calmly.  
  
"For eight years, Hannibal." She intoned with unnamable emotion, "Now together, you've haunted me ten. There is everything to dispossess."  
  
"Brave Clarice," His voice again took on the raspy, but ever-mellifluous tone that had so obsessed her all those many years ago. "Have I really been master of your thoughts so long?"  
  
"Did you ever have any question?" She raised an eloquent eyebrow for punctuation.  
  
"I did." He approached her, touching her inherent warmth of an internal inferno that had again flared, "And I thought I had lost the ability to infect your thoughts as I once had. perhaps softening in my old age?"  
  
"I thought you didn't practice self-deprecation." She challenged, enjoying her departure from placidness.  
  
"I don't." He answered simply, tossing down his own goblet and accepting her unspoken invitation to duel.  
  
"Quid pro quo, doctor." She smiled at his acceptance, "Did I ever own you?" She added alluringly, "Haunted you, the way you haunted me?"  
  
"Always," He whispered, "As you do still." He allowed silence following for her to fully appreciate his words, then picked the pace quickly up and asked, "Tell me, Clarice, did you ever fancy that I'd come back for you?"  
  
"You told me you wouldn't," She shrugged, "I trusted you." Tilting her head slightly, she added in a whisper close to his ear, "But I always wished."  
  
"And I did, I apologize for the lie."  
  
"You've never been one to deny yourself." She finished his thought with a charming little smile.  
  
"Why have you milled around restlessly since we left the US?" He asked her, candidly, the question that had apprehended his mind with doubt for months on end, "It seemed as if I'd left your spirit lying on that godforsaken earth until just now." He made his tone soft enough not to seem apprehensive.  
  
"Oooo." She sighed loudly and removed herself again to the chair, making substantial distance between them, "Loaded question, Dr. Lecter."  
  
"Hannibal," He corrected, bemused by her fallback to formalities.  
  
"No, Dr. Lecter, I said it and I meant every utterance of it. Hannibal is the one who asked the question and the one who cares for the answer, but Dr. Lecter is the reason for my 'milling'."  
  
"You are aware, Clarice, that contrary to popular belief and near consensus feeling, I am not in fact a psychopath. Therefore, both Dr. Lecter and Hannibal are the same."  
  
"Then what the hell are you? If not a psychopath, then what?" Not giving a chance for response, she explained her distinction of personalities. "Dr. Lecter was a ruthless murderer and nothing else, he killed his patients, those who trusted him; he destroyed lives like some sickening experimental joy, his friends', their families', and worst of all, mine! He was destruction without remorse, and he was never anything else to me!" Her chest heaved with the effort of her vehement speech, but her voice softened after a short beat. "But Hannibal was the most amazing, wonderful, loving everything that ever existed of mastery. he saved me when Dr. Lecter had broken me and I can never thank him fully for that one, simple letter telling me that he would never come back for me." She bore the rueful expression that had become her trademark, "The reason that I walk and pace is because I'm afraid he'll come back.and I don't leave because I know that you, Hannibal, remain. and I will never see that change."  
  
She had achieved the rare and coveted feat of leaving Dr. Hannibal Lecter speechless. She, however, did not enjoy the privilege as one not so enamored might have, and she regarded him with anxious glances.  
  
He sighed and answered her looks with a somewhat guilty inquiry. "Was I really as bad as that, to you, I mean?"  
  
"You never were," She answered quickly, "He."  
  
Hannibal made a graceful gesture to silence and interrupted her with a soft, patient tone. "Clarice, you must stop referring to me as two different entities. Just as Clarice and Agent Starling, with the exception of current rank, are the same, so are Dr. Lecter and Hannibal. Consider them, both examples, as less evolved partisans. Just as you extinguished that nasty little want of incarcerating me, I have grown past certain sadistic mind play."  
  
"Only in regard to me." She added.  
  
He smiled and nodded, acknowledging her comment, "Well, you can't expect me to yield my entire source of mirth simply because I detest toying with you."  
  
"Heaven forbid you lose your lust for mind games." Though her comment was meant to be playful, her voice was too pensive for jest.  
  
With her tone, the playfulness on his face too dissipated. With a pause, he asked softly, "Do you hate what I've done, what I have done to you?"  
  
Her expression was uncertain, and she briefly occupied herself by nervously flicking her fingernails against one another. Finally, she decided to attempt articulation, "I don't want to hate you, or what you've done, it's just." She bit her lip in thought, "I'm just still-"  
  
"-The little girl I encountered first in Baltimore," He interrupted her disappointedly, and then continued his own addition. "As much as you have changed in look and manner, your morals remain still rather intact. It serves me right, I suppose, for choosing such an incorruptible gem." He smiled to himself, "And god help me, I love you for it."  
  
She was still at a loss of how to respond. What could she say? She, after all, remained an artless child who ran to the most intriguing sweet. And still, she loved the monster she had found and feared deep in the bowels of an asylum. Perhaps she still felt as if he were the beast behind netting and bars, the one she could only contact with the aid of a sliding food carrier. Did she fear she hadn't touched him? Did she fear she had instead been pulled into the cage as well? Was she contaminated, or was he?  
  
"Try to strike a middle ground, Clarice." He said, as if reading her strolling thoughts.  
  
"You only measure in extremes, why should I be any different?" She asked, mildly defiant.  
  
"Because you are not me, Clarice." He answered without missing a beat, "Nor should you be. Attempt a difference, my darling, where I can see only black and white, point out to me the gray."  
  
"Is there a gray area in our situation, Hannibal?" She shot back with equal speed. "And if so, demonstrate how I should find it."  
  
A delighted smirk crossed his face at her quick response. "What are the facts, of both sides? What clues, Clarice, serve the balance you seek?"  
  
"You're a murder." She said coldly.  
  
"And aren't you, dear one?" He inquired with soft drawl on the last, incongruous words.  
  
"That was justice." She defended with substantial intensity.  
  
"It was killing none-the-less, Clarice." He was again challenging. "Or do you honestly believe that your badge and your title put you above the laws of your justice and humanity?"  
  
"I don't." She knew she couldn't win, so it was quickly dismissed. "We're both murderers, mine for justice, yours for pleasure. My morals remain in remnant, and yours. well, it's debatable whether they ever existed."  
  
"Don't put yourself above now, Clarice, your current position doesn't reserve you that right anymore that your prior occupation did."  
  
"We're both alike." She said, finally accepting realization, "That's the balance. Our differences are purely character and situation."  
  
"Yes." He said the word in a gently seductive hiss.  
  
Slowly, Clarice approached him, looking up with the poignant, alluring quality of a heartbroken Aphrodite. "So," Her voice was absent her Southern drawl and endowed instead with her perfect French imitation. "You're saying, mon amour, that we are completely without redemption, the both of us."  
  
"No," He sighed against her cheek as she encased herself in his arms, "We are each other's."  
  
The lights went from the third floor apartment window deep in the heart of Marseille.  
  
Neither heard the sirens.  
  
  
  
THE END 


End file.
